Going into the eighth and final stage of Paris-Nice, Jonas Vingegaard possessed a completely insurmountable three-minute and 22-second lead in the General Classification. All he had to do to secure the yellow jersey was sit in the wheels, avoid crashing on the wet descents around the Côte d’Azur, and politely roll across the finish line.
But when your V02 max is bordering on the extraterrestrial, simply sitting in the wheels is apparently too boring.
Instead of taking a well-deserved rest day, the Visma | Lease a Bike leader decided to blow the race up one last time on the Côte du Linguador, dragging local boy Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) with him to the line before the young Frenchman took the stage glory.
The 129.2-kilometer route around Nice was supposed to be a standard defensive procession for the yellow-and-black armada. As usual, Visma’s domestiques effectively put the peloton in a chokehold. Bruno Armirail mercilessly shut down a solo flyer from Valentin Paret-Peintre, and Victor Campenaerts set the launchpad at the base of the final climb.
With about 20 kilometers remaining on the Côte du Linguador (3.3 km at 8.2%), Vingegaard launched a blistering acceleration. It was a completely unnecessary tactical flex. The only rider who managed to scrape his way onto Vingegaard’s wheel was 22-year-old Lenny Martinez. The duo quickly gapped the shattered remnants of the GC group and plummeted down toward the Promenade des Anglais.
Once they hit the flat final kilometers, the dynamic was obvious. Vingegaard had secured the overall victory, and Martinez, who grew up just down the road in Cannes, was absolutely desperate for a hometown win in front of his parents.
In the final two-man sprint, Martinez managed to out-kick the Dane to take the stage. Harold Tejada (XDS Astana) rolled in a bit later to round out the day’s podium.
“To win against a rider like him shows how much I’ve improved since last year,” Martinez told the press, clearly buzzing. It’s a massive result for Bahrain Victorious, especially considering they started the day with only four riders left in the race.
But let’s be brutally honest: Vingegaard didn’t exactly fight to the death in that sprint. “A stage win would have been the icing on the cake, but I’m extremely happy that I was able to secure the overall victory,” the Dane casually noted afterward.
With this result, Vingegaard finally claims his first Paris-Nice overall title, correcting the historical anomaly of a race where “something always seemed to go wrong” for him in the past.
More importantly, it marks the third consecutive overall win at the Race to the Sun for Team Visma | Lease a Bike, following Matteo Jorgenson’s back-to-back victories in 2024 and 2025. Vingegaard heads to the Volta a Catalunya next, and the rest of the peloton should be absolutely terrified.
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